Payment Operations Manager

At Mudflap, we're modernizing the $1 trillion trucking industry, the backbone of the U.S. economy. By helping over 100,000 underserved small businesses save over $1.5 billion on fuel, Mudflap has quickly grown into a profitable fintech platform that processes billions in annual payment volume.

As a Manager of Payment Operations at Mudflap, you'll lead how we support small trucking operators whose income doesn't always arrive on a predictable schedule. You'll oversee payment disputes and escalations, manage payment flexibility, and own collections when accounts become genuinely delinquent. You'll also establish the standards, metrics, and playbooks that make our payment operations consistent, effective, and scalable.

Work Location: This role involves a hybrid work approach, balancing in-office collaboration with the flexibility to work remotely. We're prioritizing candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with Austin, TX also being considered. Mudflap has offices in Palo Alto, CA and Austin, TX.

To support our team, we offer:

• Commuter benefits to ease your travel
• Lunches and snacks to keep you fueled
• A collaborative, high-growth environment where you’ll work closely with talented teammates across the company

Expectations (In this role, you will):

• Manage disputes and escalations across payment, transaction, and account issues, establishing clear SLAs and well-defined handoffs with Customer Success.
• Develop and own the payment flexibility strategy, including criteria for when and how much flexibility a customer should receive, and how those decisions are tracked and enforced.
• Oversee collections, ensuring clear triage between genuine financial hardship and fraud or risk-flagged accounts.
• Define and track performance metrics for the function, including resolution time, recovery rate, repeat-exception rate, and cost-to-serve, with reporting on a regular cadence.
• Improve processes and tooling, including evaluating and optimizing existing automation in this space.
• Lead and develop a small team, with the opportunity to grow the function as it matures.

Cross-functional collaboration

This role sits at the center of several teams and requires someone who can build strong working relationships across all of them:

• Partner with Customer Success on case handoffs, SLAs, and the customer experience during payment issues.
• Collaborate with Risk/Underwriting on credit decisions, fraud triage, and where payment flexibility policies intersect with lending risk.
• Work closely with Compliance on debt collection laws, documentation standards, and policy reviews before implementation.
• Partner with Product to identify recurring pain points and translate them into product improvement opportunities rather than allowing them to remain manual workarounds.

Experience (What we look for):

• 5+ years of experience in payment operations, collections, or credit risk, ideally within B2B/commercial unsecured credit or a lending-adjacent business.
• Proven experience managing teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
• Strong understanding of key performance metrics, including delinquency aging and recovery rates, with the ability to balance customer flexibility against credit loss.
• High customer empathy, paired with the judgment and discipline to make firm decisions when the numbers call for it.
• Working knowledge of debt collection compliance, including FDCPA and state equivalents, with experience partnering with Legal/Compliance on policy development.
• A builder's mindset, with the ability to create structure, processes, and tooling where they don't already exist, rather than relying solely on established systems.
• Proficiency in using data and AI tools to identify patterns, inform decisions, and shape policies at scale, beyond resolving individual cases.
• Bonus: Experience in trucking, fleet, freight, or small-business lending environments where irregular income is common and not necessarily an indicator of risk.

Perks and Benefits (What we offer):

• Competitive salary and equity in a high-growth startup
• Multiple health benefit options
• Responsible Time Off
• 401(k) matching
• Opportunities and support for major career growth
• Annual Company offsite event (Mudfest!)

The base salary ranges for this role are based on work location:

• San Francisco Bay Area: $123,000 - $137,000
• Austin, TX: $90,000 - $100,000

These ranges reflect base salary compensation for this position based on current market data, which may be subject to change as new market data becomes available. The candidate's skills, experience, work location, and other relevant factors will determine the exact compensation.

Company Overview (Who we are):

Mudflap is on a mission to transform the trucking and logistics industry by leveling the playing field for owner operators and small fleets. Backed by top-tier venture investors, including QED, Matrix Partners, Commerce Ventures, NFX, and 500 Startups and included in the Forbes Fintech 50 list, Mudflap offers fleet fuel management solutions. Our core team hails from Disney, Uber, Procore, DoorDash, Google, Meta, Capital One, Affirm and Brex.

Here are the core values that we believe in and look for in new teammates:

• Be Customer Obsessed: We deeply understand customer needs and put our customers at the center of everything we do
• Make it Count: Act like an owner by focusing on the impact of your work
• Find a Way: Be a creative problem solver who pushes past roadblocks to win for our customers and our teammates
• Sweat the Details: We keep our standards high and achieve them by paying attention to every detail
• Be Curious: Use a growth mindset to question assumptions, take calculated risks and stretch the boundaries of what’s possible